They were passing through the Briarywood when he roused at last with thoughts of Fransitart's arrival-and dear Craumpalin coming too. I must write to let them know I will not be at Winstermill.
"What's wrong with you, lamp boy?" Threnody said, her voice raised only a little over the dull rumble of the lentum."Why do you cry?" She looked at Fransitart's letter. "Who is the correspondence from?"
Rossamund became suddenly very aware of the girclass="underline" aware of her proximity; of his unwanted tears. He wiped at them quickly, sniffing impatiently. "My old dormitory master back in Boschenberg…," he answered reluctantly. "He… he sends sad news."
"Sad news?" Threnody folded the duodecimo in her lap.
"My old home was burned down by an old foe," Rossamund managed. "Madam Opera died in the fire. She was the owner… and a… a mother, I suppose-in a strange way. She named me-marked it in the book… "
"You're a better soul than me, Rossamund."
"How?"
"You weep over the death of some wastrel proprietress, yet I can only wish my very own mother might perish in a fire."
With a frown, Rossamund returned to the window and broodily observed the passing scene. He knew she was just trying to be kind. It did not help that she was not very good at it.
The post-lentum clopped between the twin keeps of Wellnigh House without hesitation, under the Omphalon, and on through to the Roughmarch. With a feeling very much like going through the Axles of Boschenberg, Rossamund realized with equal parts dread and expectancy that he had never been farther east than this point, that he was hurtling into what were, for him, unknown lands.
A great-lamp at every bend, the Roughmarch Road twisted serpentlike through a valley clotted with thorny plants of many kinds-sloe, briar, boxthorn and blackberry, its spiny runners thickly stickling the verge. As with the wild grasses of the Harrowmath, fatigue parties were regularly sent out from Wellnigh House and Tumblesloe Cot to pull and prune these plants, to resist the threwd and deny monsters a hide from which to ambush.Yet either side of the way was only partially hacked and cleared, and Rossamund could still feel the haunting watchfulness here, strong but strangely restrained. He stared at the high bald hills, dark and silent, and pulled up the door sash to keep the threat outside, glad he did not have to work the lamps on this stretch.
If Threnody noticed the threwd, she did not show it. Indeed, she started to hum as she read her book and paid Rossamund and the rest of the world little heed.
They drove down out of the hills where a creek bubbled alongside the Wormway, spilling over lichen-covered rocks, beneath twisted roots of writhen, leafless trees and south under the road to make a bog at the foot of a short cliff. In as much time as it took to walk to Wellnigh House from Winstermill, they were passing the walls of Tumblesloe Cot, not pausing there either. The cothouse was built away from the highroad, right up against the cliffs that marched upon the eastern flanks of the hills. Nothing could be seen of it but the stonework curtain wall and the tops of a handful of high chimneys. They were in foreign lands now-the great divide between the Idlewild and the rest of the Empire had been crossed.
"Welcome to the Placidine," said Threnody. "Dovecote Bolt is next, at the junction with another road; if you left the highroad and took this other pathway north it would lead you to my old home, Herbroulesse."
Rossamund looked at his peregrinat maps and saw the path she was talking of and her home too, both important enough to be mentioned. He did not want to be, but he was actually impressed.While it had stood, Madam Opera's marine society had never featured on any map he knew. "What will your mother think of what you're doing," he asked, "going off to dangerous cothouses?"
"She would lecture at me and I would disagree and we would start screaming and I would be sent away somewhere with Dolours till Mother could bear to see me again."
"But what about the Emperor's Billion?" Rossamund pressed.
"What about it?" Threnody snapped. "My mother has a larger mandate than that! Our clave's Imperial Prerogative takes precedence over simple tokens."
"Imperial Prerogative?"
She gave him the by-now-familiar are-you-really-that-stupid? look and said after a sigh, "It allows us to do and be without the states troubling us. It is granted by the Emperor himself, and not every clave has one." She finished with a proud sniff.
Before them the Conduit Vermis descended into a broad, shallow valley of scruffy pastures hemmed to the north by a spur of bald hills and to the south by the rolling, pastured fells of the Sparrow Downs. It was an unremarkable land. Rossamund stared at the distant downs, wondering if an urchin-lord truly was there watching and sending out its little sparrow-agents from its leafy courts.
As the day grew longer, traffic began to pass going the other way. There were other post-lentums with returning dispatches; barouques and landaulets, perhaps taking the well-to-do to High Vesting or Brandenbrass; dyphrs dashing on errands; crofters commuting in curricles between land and town.They also began to overtake slow-moving higglers with their trays of fripperies, stooklings with their enormous bundles of sticks, laborers with their barrows, vendors with their donkey carts; and always, whether in their direction or against, the ox drays and mule crates of the merchants.
Another lamppost flicked past.
It was going to be a long stretch to Wormstool.
"Ah," Threnody exclaimed, of a sudden, stirring Rossamund from his sorrows, "I am sharp-set-it must be time for middens."
The prentice craned a look out the window at the gun-metal sky. The sun hid behind the even cover of clouds. He could not tell what hour it was-surely well past midday, yet his stomach told the time more truly with a noisy poppling gurgle.
Threnody gave out a peculiar laughing bark. "Your gizzards think so too, it appears!" She extracted a ditty bag from among her cushions and wraps, and shared her pong with dried-and-salted pork and a handful of millet, all washed down with a brown bottle of small beer.
Sick of the little varying diet of the Emperor's Service, Rossamund took some food and ate perfunctorily. Dull grief would not let him eat. However, once started, he found his appetite returned and he supped heartily enough.
At the meal's end, Threnody took out a vial of sticky red Friscan's wead.
Rossamund stared fixedly out of the window as she drank, not wanting to invite some petulant overreaction.
With shadows growing long as the bulk of Tumblesloe Heap brought an early sunset, and their rumps sore from too much sitting, they passed the lantern-watch of Dovecote Bolt wending west, fodicars on shoulder, winding out the lonely lamps. The lampsmen hailed the lenterman, but paid no heed to the passengers.
Gloaming finally gave up to darkness as they followed the glittering chain of new-lit lamps and arrived at the cothouse itself. Dovecote Bolt was a high-house: whitewashed walls upon exposed stone foundations, with a fortified stairway to the only door at the very top of the structure, a high wall extending behind it and a crowd of glowing lanterns at its front. It was built close by a sludgy ford over the beginnings of a little stream known as the Mirthlbrook. Just before the ford the post-lentum turned, went through a heavy gate and halted in the modest coach yard at the rear of the cothouse.
The splasher boy opened the door, unfolded the step and said with a parched croak, "First stop. And an overnight stay till tomorrow's post."
As luggage was retrieved, lampsmen appeared from within bearing bright-limns to light their way and dour expressions to greet them. The seven-strong garrison of this modest cothouse seemed very tight, veterans with a long record of service together. However, they had little cheer for new-promoted lampsmen, looking especially hard at Threnody as she mounted the stair and entered the guardroom. It occupied the entirety of that floor, and with benches and trestles, doubled as a common room for meals. The two young lamplighters were directed to the cramped office of Dovecote Bolt's house-major, found in an attic-space loft of the steep roof.